


Growing Pains

by maddienole



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode s07e06, F/M, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25393780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maddienole/pseuds/maddienole
Summary: As Daniel Sousa lies captured by Malick and his men, he reflects on his past relationships and a budding affection towards one Daisy Johnson. Takes place during season seven, episode six, "Adapt or Die."
Relationships: Daisy Johnson & Daniel Sousa, Peggy Carter/Daniel Sousa (One Sided), Skye | Daisy Johnson/Daniel Sousa
Comments: 6
Kudos: 94





	Growing Pains

**Author's Note:**

> This ship has taken over my life. That is all.

Daniel Sousa had been in love only once before. Sure, there had been flings, dates, crushes, little high school flirts that he had thought the world of at eighteen but could barely remember now.

But love was something else entirely.

See, he _thought_ he was in love once. Her name was Molly Simmons- pretty, perky, and exuded a kind of innocence that made her irresistible to the guys in first period with less than admirable intentions.

He took her out to the soda fountain after saving up some money from his paper route, kissed her goodnight under the stars, and found her the next day in an embrace with Tommy Peterson outside of math class.

That was the end of that.

The concept of love shouldn’t have been a difficult one, yet Sousa had a difficult time grasping the finer details.

How does one define love when one hasn’t experienced it themselves? It was something that he grappled with well into adulthood as he watched his childhood friends get married and start families of their own.

Perhaps it wasn’t something he would ever have to deal with in his lifetime. And somehow...he was okay with that. How could one think of romance when the world was at war?

And then he met _her._

Peggy Carter was perhaps unlike any person he had ever met before. Strong and assertive, firm in her stances but not entirely rigid in her beliefs. She lived without fear. She was....amazing. A force to be reckoned with.

Sousa wasn’t an idiot. It was a man’s world, after all. He knew she wouldn’t have it easy in S.H.I.E.L.D, even after she had proved herself again and again.

And it was perhaps this persistence, this...this _drive_ that made him love her even more.

_Love._

Is that what that feeling was?

The warmth that he felt in his chest every time he laid his eyes on her? This warmth that would spread from his chest to his fingertips when she gave a command.

It was...intoxicating.

And it was never meant to be.

It took Sousa to realize, perhaps much too late, that Peggy was lost to him long before they had even met. Her heart was firmly tied with the man who had plunged into the icy waters on that cold spring day all those years back. The man they called Captain America, but to her would always be Steve.

And he accepted this as best he could, even when the man himself returned from beyond the grave.

It...hurt. No, _he_ hurt.

What this what love was?

Was this what Peggy felt when she lost him?

Maybe...maybe love wasn’t worth the effort after all. Because he woke with a biting pain in his chest every morning that was a dull ache on good days and an incomprehensible agony on bad ones.

He moved around a bit after she left, trying not to let his thoughts of her linger in his head, her eyes, her hair, her smile...

She had such a gorgeous smile, one that lit up the room upon her entering.

He would shake his head. He could continue on. He was a soldier, after all. And he would have to begrudgingly accept this as his new reality.

That was, until the aliens came.

They were called....what was it?

Chrom-i-cons?

No, that wasn’t quite right, but his head was rather fuzzy right now, and it was aching something awful. Actually, it was incredibly hot in this room, wasn’t it? Stifling and dreadfully uncomfortable.

He had no idea how he’d gotten here, honestly. Not from where he was a day ago....or was it now several decades ago?

Just the thought of time travel made his head pound even worse, the type of pain that made you squint as the light hit your eyes or you might go blind. The type of pain that spread from your forehead to your lobes, squeezing at your brain.

But why was he complaining?

It was Daisy that was the one in trouble right now.

_Daisy...._

Sousa promised himself he wouldn’t fall in love again. It was his undying love for Peggy that ruined his relationship with the lovely Violet way back when, and he couldn’t find it in himself to find any other woman to fill that hole. He couldn’t risk it.

But with Daisy?

He had only known her for a day and she had somehow wormed her way into his heart in such a manner that no other woman (asides from Peggy) had managed to do.

And it was killing him.

He couldn’t deny that she was attractive - what man wouldn’t be able to see that? But it wasn’t her looks that he admired, it was....well, everything?

She was intelligent and resourceful, strong in a way that most people weren’t. He sensed that she had demons, ones that he didn’t dare probe, but in this line of business it wasn’t uncommon to have a past.

“ _We are the good guys,”_ she had told him after the infiltration of Area 51.

Why was he so willing to believe her?

He stretched his aching muscles, trying to clear his head as best he could. The nagging concern never left him, eating away at the back of his brain.

Was she safe?

_Obviously not, idiot. She’s being cut open as we speak._

He groaned, rubbing his temples. He couldn’t remember the last time his head hurt this bad. The handcuffs were cutting into his wrists and.... _god, it is hot in here._

The creaking sound of an opening door broke him from his reverie.

Two of Malick’s men came in, dragging Daisy between them. Sousa struggled to his knees as the man himself entered the room, looking characteristically smug.

“What did you do?” he growled.

“Took as much blood and spinal fluid as I thought she could handle...”

Sousa felt sick, forcing the bile back down from his throat as Malick continued on, the smirk never leaving his face.

He bent down towards his injured friend as his captor finally left the room.

“Daisy...”

She looked...he couldn’t quite describe. Caked with blood and sweat and... and...

And suddenly he was back in the war again. People were dying left and right as the sound of machine fire deafened everyone in range. And there was so... _so_ much blood.

“Has this happened before?” he asked as gently as possible, only to be treated with a series of gasps as she tried to force the air through her lungs.

Sousa was....stuck. There was no medical treatment available here and no way to close her wounds....

He closed his eyes, if only briefly. In this situation, there was only one thing he knew how to do. Gently easing her head onto his leg, he began to talk.

“It was foggy,” he recalled, rather breathless from the sudden exertion of energy.

“I can’t really remember the hit, but I came to and my leg was a pulpy mess...”

This wasn’t a story he was ever keen on telling. His memories of the incident were so scattered in his brain that trying to stitch them together was a task in of itself. But he needed to keep talking, if not for himself, then for _her._

Daisy lay there silently, fluttering in the edge of consciousness as her body was shutting down from blood loss.

Oh, he had been here before.

“I was completely alone...”

He stopped, and what could be considered a smile formed on his face.

Yes, he _did_ remember this part.

“And then Mike Stevens showed up. And he just kept talking to me. He...he carried me back from the line....”

Daisy shifted, if only slightly, the faintest indication of the life still within her.

So he kept talking.

He talked about the war. About the cold and the stretchers and the hospitals. He talked about how Mike never made it home.

And _that_ was why he kept talking, gently stroking her hair to let her know that he was still here, even if she wasn’t awake to hear him.

This....this wasn’t how he expected to die. When he was young he had dreams of dying as a hero in battle, defending his country with honor, not locked in a room to be used as some psychopath’s science experiment.

And Daisy?

No, she didn’t deserve any of this.

“You have got to fight,” he said, perhaps more forcefully than was required. “Do you hear me?”

She let out a soft groan as she raised her bloody, clenched fist to his face.

Perhaps she wasn’t as unconscious as Sousa thought her to be.

He unclenched her hand and...oh...

_Clever girl._

She was hiding a shiv just under her palm.

“Plenty of fight left in you after all,” he murmured as she collapsed back onto his leg in a fit of gasps.

Sousa held the bloodied shiv to his face, a new sense of purpose building within him.

They would make it out of here. They will live. And they will save the world.

He looked down at Daisy, who had finally lost her battle to stay conscious, and gently stroked her cheek.

Love was...hard. Complicated. And terribly difficult to control.

Daisy reminded him of _her_ , he realized. She had Peggy’s tenacity. She had her spirit. Her determination.

Was that why he was so drawn to her?

He was never good at love.

But maybe....just maybe....he would finally be willing to try.


End file.
